Suspend the Summer Fuel Tax!!!

John McCain and Hillary Clinton are just brilliant! Why haven't we thought about this in the first place? All we need to do is suspend the gas tax for the summer months and the whole world would be a better place. Wow, that was easy...

Okay, this is really bugging me. I saw an ad on television last night cutting on Barack Obama because he thinks its a bad idea to suspend the gas tax for the heavy driving season. Hillary is cutting on him because he wants Americans to keep paying this overwhelming tax. The commercial touts eight billion dollars spent on the gas tax that we could be saving. What the commercial fails to do is look at the real math. Let me tell you people, the math doesn't lie.

Let's say that all of the sudden my beat up Honda quit getting the mileage it is currently giving me and I need to start dropping 10 gallons of gas into it's tank each week. The current federal tax you pay on a gallon of gas is about 18 cents. That means that on that 10 gallon fill up I'm going to save a whopping $1.80. Over the 12 week summer driving season that comes out to be about $22.00 that I save. Frankly I don't think that this is a significant enough amount to justify voting for one person over another for President.

I want to take this a bit further. Let's say that America as a nation saves that same $8 billion. Now, don't you think that money is currently earmarked for something? You think that we are going to just not pay for the stuff that money is supposed to going to? No, we will pay for it somehow, even if that means deficit spending, which puts our country further in debt. More likely however is the fact that there would be some other tax that would kick in that would pry that same $8 billion out of our pockets.

Meanwhile the oil companies are going to be clapping and cheering because this will do nothing but put more cash in their pockets. Without regulation, the oil companies could easily bump gas prices up to fill the void left by the immediate savings from suspending the tax. Besides that, the oil companies are going to make more because we are now traveling more under the false belief that we now can because gas is cheaper.

The fact of the matter is that politicians who don't punch the oil companies right in the mouth are likely guilty of sneaking their hand into Uncle Exxon's front pocket for a few coins of their own. Listen to the ads on TV people. Listen to what they are saying. Tax cuts come with consequences. Don't let the sweet voice of a politician lull you into thinking that they have your best interest in mind.

Okay, there. I've had my rant. As always, comments are welcome.